East Cheshire Hospice is a haven of care and calm for the communities of Buxton, Congleton, High Legh, High Peak, Knutsford, Macclesfield, Poynton, Wilmslow and everywhere in between. The Hospice and its team of staff and volunteers aim to make every day count for patients, their carers and families with expert and sympathetic care that puts their needs and wishes first.
The challenge
Communication is vital for families at the Hospice, the medical and administrative teams, and visiting health and social care professionals. The Hospice’s legacy business phone system had reached capacity, was inflexible and was time-consuming to make day-to-day changes. There were a wide range of requirements from different users, such as volunteers and patient care staff, which were proving difficult to satisfy. There was no remote office or teleworking functionality, and the business phone system was increasingly costly to maintain in terms of support and replacement kits due to the age of the system. The ‘flat’ LAN wasn’t capable of prioritising traffic and needed upgrading if it was going to be fit for purpose in a VoIP (hosted voice) environment.
The solution
Radius' recommendation to the Hospice was an Avaya IP Office with a new Avaya Networking (previously Nortel) Layer 3 Ethernet LAN. The new network and system are completely flexible, providing the functionality required for the Hospice’s unique mix of users and allowing more connectivity in terms of SIP and remote working.
"From our initial meeting, Radius clearly understood the unique challenges for the Hospice and proposed a full range of options to meet our requirements.
The transition from our outdated telephone system to the Avaya system was seamless with excellent configuration, implementation and training.
The continuing support provided to the Hospice is excellent, allowing full use of the system's capabilities and ensuring the configuration meets the needs of all staff volunteers at the Hospice." - Mike Drew, IT Manager, East Cheshire Hospice.
The results
The new solution is much easier for the Hospice’s IT team to manage, and help is always on hand from Radius' local support team. The installation was seamlessly managed, and training was provided to staff and volunteers to ensure that the Hospice could continue providing the highest level of care to patients and their families. This has reduced ongoing support costs and has resulted in great feedback from end users, which was extremely important to the organisation.
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